| the-pi-guy said: >It would have sold well on PS5 and help keep momentum 1)Or it has absolutely no effect on momentum. PS5 is selling out, and it's going to be selling out for the foreseeable future. The vast majority of people aren't going to care that God of War is also on PS4. >Most likely, internal data shows that the PS5 isn't doing well with consumers 2)Most likely, internal data shows that lots of people are still playing PS4 games and they don't care if games are exclusive. |
1)
Exactly. We're seeing that Spiderman is more or less acting as a major system seller for PS5 despite being cross-gen. The PS4 version dropped off the PSN chart in the US+ UK since January, the vast majority of people want the best version of the game, the one that was marketed to them and they'll wait til they get a PS5 to play it. Equally, most people are going to watch Horizon 2 and say they need a PS5 to play it on, not "I can't to play the downgraded version on my PS4".
"... even if you removed the sales of the PS4 version this week, it would still have been No.1. The PS5 version accounted for 90% of the game's sales this week"
The highest ratio the PS4 version has had was 30% during the games launch week when the PS5's userbase was literally none existent.
2)
I'd imagine cross-gen development was decided a while ago based off assumptions on PS4's huge userbase and early estimations of the respective games release dates. People are still playing PS4 games in huge amounts but the above data goes against the idea that there will be a large audience for future PlayStation exclusives on PS4 in 2022. Although 10% of a 10m selling title, is still 1 million additional sales. I see Japan and Asia being the only exception to the rule where PS4 will get a healthier share of software.
I suspect also there is some freedom on the teams behalf too. Returnal and Ratchet have next-gen features which make them impossiple on PS4 (instant world travel in Ratchet and 60fps mandate+GPU driven bullet hell in Returnal). People may rub their eyes at the idea of Returnal not being possible on PS4 but there's a reason why its internal resolution is 1080p on the PS5. At the very least, the developers in question would have struggled to get it running on PS4 whilst maintaining their 60fps vision.
Horizon and GOW however are direct sequels that maybe build on top of last-gen foundations with high levels of fidelity being the focus instead of reinventing the wheel or having SSD driven mechanics. That may sound disappointing to some but the reality is diminishing returns means there's very little the last generation couldn't do in terms of traditional open world/3rd person gameplay. The negative impact of cross-gen in these games is more likely to be about the development schedule and extra time they need to port down versus restriction in game design. I dare say the Switch has my favourite open-world experience of the last generation in the form of BOTW, so I don't think power is a major limitation for inventive gameplay (more the creativity & ambition of the devs).
